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Journal Article
Credit cards: use and consumer attitudes, 1970-2000
Durkin, Thomas A. (2000-09)
From modest origins in the 1950s as a convenient way for the relatively well-to-do to settle restaurant and department store purchases without carrying cash, credit cards have become a ubiquitous financial product held by households in all economic strata. Since the late 1960s, much federal legislation has been enacted to ensure that consumers have the protections and information they need to use this widely available form of open-end credit wisely. Nevertheless, concerns persist about whether consumers fully understand the costs and implications of using credit cards and whether credit cards ...
Federal Reserve Bulletin , Volume 86 , Issue Sep

Working Paper
Spatial Commitment Devices and Addictive Goods: Evidence from the Removal of Slot Machines from Bars
Scholnick, Barry; Byun, Hyungsuk (2017-10-06)
Commitment device theory suggests that temptations to consume addictive goods could be reduced by the regulatory removal of geographically close environmental cues. We provide new evidence on this hypothesis using a quasi-natural experiment, in which gambling regulators removed slot machines from some, but not all, neighborhood bars. We find that the removal of slot machines reduced personal bankruptcies of close neighbors (within 100 meters) but not neighbors slightly farther away. This is consistent with the removal of neighborhood slots serving as an effective spatial commitment device, ...
Working Papers , Paper 17-34

Working Paper
Inflation at the Household Level
Kaplan, Greg; Schulhofer-Wohl, Sam (2016-04-11)
We use scanner data to estimate inflation rates at the household level. Households' inflation rates are remarkably heterogeneous, with an interquartile range of 6.2 to 9.0 percentage points on an annual basis. Most of the heterogeneity comes not from variation in broadly defined consumption bundles but from variation in prices paid for the same types of goods - a source of variation that previous research has not measured. The entire distribution of household inflation rates shifts in parallel with aggregate inflation. Deviations from aggregate inflation exhibit only slightly negative serial ...
Working Papers , Paper 731

Working Paper
Inequality in the Time of COVID-19: Evidence from Mortgage Delinquency and Forbearance
An, Xudong; Cordell, Lawrence R.; Geng, Liang; Lee, Keyoung (2021-03-02)
Using a novel database that combines mortgage servicing records, credit-bureau data, and loan application information, we show that lower-income and minority borrowers have signiﬁcantly higher nonpayment rates during the COVID-19 pandemic, even after controlling for conventional risk factors. A difference-in-differences analysis shows how much the pandemic has exacerbated income and racial inequalities. We then find that government and private-sector forbearance programs have mitigated these inequalities in the near term, as lower-income and minority borrowers have taken up the short-term ...
Working Papers , Paper 21-09

Working Paper
Are Millennials Different?
Kurz, Christopher J.; Li, Geng; Vine, Daniel J. (2018-11-28)
The economic wellbeing of the millennial generation, which entered its working-age years around the time of the 2007-09 recession, has received considerable attention from economists and the popular press. This chapter compares the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of millennials with those of earlier generations and compares their income, saving, and consumption expenditures. Relative to members of earlier generations, millennials are more racially diverse, more educated, and more likely to have deferred marriage; these comparisons are continuations of longer-run trends in the ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2018-080

Working Paper
A concise test of rational consumer search
Sorensen, Bent E.; Luengo-Prado, Maria Jose; Lee, Chloe (2018-06-18)
A simple model of time allocation between work and price-search predicts that consumers spend relatively more time searching for better prices for goods of which they consume relatively more. Using scanner data, we confirm empirically that consumers pay lower (higher) prices for goods that they buy more (less) of than other consumers. Our results are conservative, because we compare goods that are defined as narrowly as possible by UPC codes, and provide a lower bound for the savings obtained from bargain hunting.
Working Papers , Paper 18-4

Working Paper
Shopping Time
Wasmer, Etienne; Zeng, Shutian; Petrosky-Nadeau, Nicolas (2014-09)
The renewal of interest in macroeconomic theories of search frictions in the goods market requires a deeper understanding of the cyclical properties of the intensive margins in this market. We review the theoretical mechanisms that promote either procyclical or countercyclical movements in time spent searching for consumer goods and services, and then use the American Time Use Survey to measure shopping time through the Great Recession. Average time spent searching declined in the aggregate over the period 2008-2010 compared to 2005-2007, and the decline was largest for the unemployed who ...
Working Paper Series , Paper 2014-24

Report
Using home maintenance and repairs to smooth variable earnings
Tracy, Joseph; Gyourko, Joseph (2003-05-01)
Recent research indicates that the marked increase in U.S. income inequality over the last twenty-five years has not been matched by a similar increase in consumption inequality. This paper examines the role of saving/dissaving in a house as a vehicle for consumption smoothing. Data from the American Housing Survey show that expenditures on home maintenance and repairs are economically significant, amounting to roughly $1,750 per household each year. This figure is comparable to the labor literature estimates that put households' average annual transitory income variance at about $2,200. Our ...
Staff Reports , Paper 168

Working Paper
Minimum Wages and Consumer Credit : Impacts on Access to Credit and Traditional and High-Cost Borrowing
Dettling, Lisa J.; Hsu, Joanne W. (2017-01-15)
Proponents of minimum wage legislation point to its potential to raise earnings and reduce poverty, while opponents argue that disemployment effects lead to net welfare losses. But these arguments typically ignore the possibility of spillover effects on other aspects of households' financial circumstances. This paper examines how state-level minimum wages affect the decisions of lenders and low-income borrowers. Using data derived from direct mailings of credit offers, survey-reported usage of high-cost alternative credit products, and debt recorded in credit reports, we find that higher ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2017-010

Speech
A review of the experience of fielding the Survey of Consumer Expectations
McAndrews, James J. (2014-08-05)
Remarks at the Barclays Global Inflation Conference, New York City.
Speech , Paper 139

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